With the coronavirus pandemic forcing everyone online, technology was pushed to the fore in 2020. But what does this mean for digital transformation in 2021?

To mark the end of a challenging 12 months, the editorial team at National Technology News have rounded up a host of industry experts to tell us their top technology predictions for the year ahead.


More ‘Deepfakes’ and disinformation

In keeping with trends experienced this year, 2021 will see a further increase of disinformation across social media platforms.

According to Andrew Bud CBE, founder and chief executive of iProov, there will be an explosion in both the quality and quantity of ‘Deepfake’ usage.

Deepfakes are AI-powered fake videos and images, which are becoming increasingly commonplace and lifelike.

A lot of these Deepfakes will be developed for light-hearted purposes and entertainment, while others will be used for more sinister reasons.

“But we’ll also see Deepfakes being used for disinformation and trolling,” says Bud. “Celebrities, politicians and experts will be shown saying things that they’ve never said.”
He adds: “Armies of ‘fake people’ who look, and sound real will share disinformation on an enormous scale, making people believe that thousands of people hold a contentious opinion, when in fact none of those people even exist.”

It is now much easier to generate high quality, advanced fake videos.

“What was once a very complicated process, only really possible in Hollywood movie studios, is now something that any teenager sitting in their bedroom can execute proficiently,” explains Bud. “Those Deepfakes become a currency on social media, whether they’re used to assert credibility or used to attack.”

In the new year social media platforms can tackle Deepfakes by implementing high-quality authentication, including heightened verification based on biometrics.

“Though users will not be strong-armed into it, individuals new to a platform will be increasingly encouraged to sign up through these more secure means,” explains Bud.

Higher tech expectations

The Workforce Institute at UKG says that the increased tech usage in our daily lives as a result of coronavirus will put more pressure on organisations to deliver a workplace technology experience that matches their employees’ consumer technology experience.
While many businesses have undergone years’ worth of digital transformation in mere months, “emerging technologies face a day of reckoning.”

The cloud computing company says that the focus on artificial intelligence’s “overhyped promises that may never come,” will be replaced by a demand for more practical AI and automation.

It also predicts that alongside their employees, organisations will start to pay closer attention to current and prospective technology, “demanding significant value from systems—both old and new—while ensuring they measurably enhance performance, productivity, and the overall employee experience.”

“If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s the importance of being prepared,” says Ian Fairclough, vice president, EMEA customer success, MuleSoft. “Digital transformation has been high on the agenda for years, but few of us could have imagined that the demand for digital initiatives would have increased so dramatically in the last 12 months.

“In 2021, we’ll see organisations explore ways of developing their resilience to future challenges through greater use of APIs. Doing so means they can set themselves up to become agile enough to handle the immediate effects of a crisis, but also to power the long-term innovation and connected experiences that customers increasingly value.”

Further reliance on The Cloud

In 2020 the Cloud has come into its own, aiding better resistance in many businesses’ operations.

“This year…the technology is helping add a layer of resilience to many organisations by making the sudden shifts in working habits less disruptive,” says CR Srinivasan, chief digital officer at Tata Communications. “This has sealed cloud’s place as an essential piece of enterprise tech.

“In the next five years, the cloud computing industry is expected to grow from $371.4 billion in 2020 to $832.1 billion by 2025.”

Srinivasan predicts that next year businesses will start to focus more on managing their cloud costs better and look to unify their different cloud environments.

“In the face of increased competition due to greater prevalence, cloud providers will need to focus on enhancing and integrating security, compliance, and privacy into their offerings,” he says.

It’s likely that the popularity of Cloud will grow, and it will perhaps even be recognised as the ideal execution venue for new and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and edge computing.

“The accelerated growth of next-generation cloud-native digital apps and services will define new competitive requirements in every industry. Cloud native and containers are rapidly turning into the new blueprint for application development and underlying cloud infrastructure services,” explains Giorgio Regni, CTO at Scality.

“For the storage industry, the container trend represents a significant inflection point that will transform deployment architectures leveraging Kubernetes and container-native storage APIs. Its impact will be comparable to that of server virtualisation in the 2000s and cloud computing in the 2010s.”

Scality also predicts that hybrid cloud data management will be adopted for disaster recovery next year. According to the global software business, disaster recovery across two physical data centres will be a thing of the past by next year.

Instead, it is expected that hybrid cloud disaster recovery systems that manage synchronised copies of critical data on-premises and in the public cloud will enable IT leaders to avoid the costs required to maintain and service two remote locations for disaster recovery, thereby saving thousands, if not millions, of pounds.


The growing role of data & IoT

Due to widespread digitisation of operations, data has become even more important this year.

The amount of data generated in 2021 is set to hit record amounts, so businesses will need to find the best way to both manage and analyse it.

“With more 5G rollouts expected in 2021, along with further growth in LP-WAN-based services, the amount of data created and handled by businesses is set to skyrocket,” explains CR Srinivasan, Tata Communications. “So, to differentiate themselves from the competition, more companies will start focusing on data analytics technology capable of securely handling information as well as analysing and deriving greater insights from their mostly unused operational data.

He adds: “So, in all of this, I expect IoT to play a pivotal role – helping to automate processes and make more information readily available to enterprises. And as IoT becomes increasingly intertwined with AI, and more deeply embedded in organisational structures and transformation programmes, devices will become increasingly ‘smart’ and capable of driving greater intelligence.”


Online authentication

Also influenced by the shift to digital working and online shopping, identity verification will become a focal point for many organisations.

“Because millions have been forced online to access healthcare and financial services, purchase groceries and consume entertainment, the focus in 2021 and beyond will turn to verifying identities for the huge swathes of digital accounts that are being created every day - especially in those industries that are playing catch-up,” explains Zac Cohen, chief operations officer, Trulioo.

“The shift towards identity verification as a key strategic driver for organisations needing to satisfy regulatory requirements, prevent fraud, and build trust online, is an important, ongoing priority to safeguard long-term success.”

This will of course mean building trust with consumers and putting best-in-class technologies and processes in place to validate that each customer is who they say they are.
Prabath Siriwardena, vice president and deputy chief technology officer security architecture, WSO2, says that the mass pivot to offering online services will drive demand for intelligent customer identity and access management (CIAM) solutions.

“Businesses that have previously operated only in the physical environment pride themselves on knowing regular customers as they walk through the door, putting a face to a name, and remembering their preferences,” says Siriwardena.

“However, now they are faced with trying to achieve the same level of customer knowledge in the virtual environment through online ordering and delivery services. They will need to build customer profiles that turn anonymous website visitors into well-known, valued customers to whom they can offer personalised services.”

He says that customer types will fall into broader subsets. Many are innately comfortable with buying online, but their expectations have been shaped by the highly sophisticated experiences delivered by Amazon, putting pressure on digital debutants to reach these high standards of user experience.

“On the other hand, many new online users will be unfamiliar with digital channels, so they need an intuitive, secure experience that safeguards their data privacy if they are to build trust with the retailer,” he adds. “This imperative will drive demand for high-performance, cost-effective customer identity access management solutions.

These greenfield development projects will see strong demand for third-party cloud-based IAM solutions as businesses opt for this approach rather than developing proprietary systems.”

In the next year we could also see banking regulators in global locations, including Europe and the Far East, give the greenlight for automated biometrics instead of video calling for remote ‘Know Your Customer’ processes.

“Just as in 2019, when a well-publicised voice fraud scam duped a high-profile CEO, by the end of the year there will have been several criminal money-laundering scandals arising from the use of deepfakes in video calls,” says Andrew Bud CBE, founder and chief executive, iProov.

“Countering this could very well mean that several countries, including the United States, also take concrete steps towards instituting government-backed digital identities. This will be an important step towards enabling financial institutions and government departments to verify identity and mitigate fraud in bank onboarding and government support programmes.”
Experts believe adaptive authentication will emerge as a must-have over the next 12 months.

“As network boundaries are diluted, people will be accessing an organisation’s services from anywhere; it won’t be possible to authenticate users based on single factors, such as their location,” he says. “Instead, authentication will be based on numerous interdependent factors, including behaviour analysis, time of access, location, and more.”

These factors will then be analysed by machine-learning algorithms that have access to large amounts of behavioural and network data to build up a risk score.

Cyber Security

In the cybersecurity space, trends are likely to mirror and enhance those triggered by the pandemic.

HP expects that next year there will be a rise in thread hijacking, whaling, and human-operated ransomware.

According to the technology company, weakened organisational security will lead to more insider threats.

“With employees working remotely, the lines between work and personal equipment are blurred, and innocent actions – such as reading personal email on a company machine – can have serious consequences,” says Joanna Burkey, CISO, HP.

Alongside this, experts predict that human-operated ransomware attacks will remain a big threat.

According to Burkey, ransomware has become the cybercriminal’s tool of choice, and this is likely to continue in the year ahead.

“What we’ll see is a rise in ransomware-as-service attacks where the threat is no longer the ‘kidnapping’ of data – it’s the public release of the data,” she says.

This trend will be a particular challenge for public sector organisations.

“The rise of ‘double extortion’ ransomware, where victim data is exfiltrated before being encrypted, will particularly hurt public sector organizations, who process all manner of personally identifiable information,” says Alex Holland, senior malware analyst. “Even if a ransom is paid, there is no guarantee that a threat actor won’t later monetize the stolen data.”

Greater innovation in phishing will also see a significant rise in threat hijacking and whaling attacks.

“The most innovative mass phishing technique we see is email thread hijacking, which is used by the Emotet botnet,” says Dr Ian Pratt, global head of security for personal systems, HP. “The technique automates the creation of spear-phishing lures by stealing email data from compromised systems.

He adds: “This data is then used to reply to conversations with messages containing malware, making them appear very convincing.”


Voice assistance

Another digital offering that will almost certainly grow in popularity over the next year is voice assistance.

“By continuing to stay in their house, people will be more willing to listen to things on voice assistance to help with daily tasks and indoor hobbies,” says Colin Watkins, UK country manager, Duolingo. “We can ask voice assistance tools for recipes and advice when cooking or ask it to help us translate something into a different language in a matter of seconds, which will greatly help language learning skills.

He adds: “With these home assistant tools, we can also expect even more people to become interested in listening to podcasts at home than on the run or commuting.”

Data storage: embracing flash media

Next year a new generation of high-density flash storage will be widely available in the market. A combination of lower prices and better performance has meant it is now suitable for scale-out high-capacity file and object storage.

According to global software company Scality, until now flash storage has been deployed in smaller capacity applications and latency-sensitive use cases, while high-density spinning disk has been the preferred storage medium for large volumes of data, for example, media files or medical images.

Revolt over smart device privacy

Experts say that 2021 will mark a tipping point for consumers when it comes to smart device privacy. It’s expected that consumers will start to better understand the privacy issues associated with smart and connected devices like Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa.

Security analysts at WatchGuard Technologies believe that users will start to push back against vendors of IoT devices that collect personal data and will pressure governments to regulate the capabilities of these devices to protect their privacy.

Over the past few years, there’s been a significant uptake in smart devices like Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa, along with home systems that control room temperatures and lights. But behind the scenes, the machine learning algorithms that power these systems correlate data to document user activities, interests, and behaviours.

“While smart and connected device technologies deliver real benefits, society is starting to realise that giving corporations too much insight into our lives is not healthy,” says Corey Nachreiner, chief technology officer, WatchGuard. “That’s why we predict that users will finally make vendors take privacy for home and consumer IoT devices more seriously in 2021. Expect to see the market under greater scrutiny to be more transparent about the collection and protection of personal data, and government representatives under pressure to legislate.”

WatchGuard’s Threat Lab also thinks there will be more smart devices being targeted by hackers, in particular smart car attacks, in the new year.

“As businesses aim to launch online services quickly, many are drawn to service aggregation platforms that allow them to reach an online customer base fast,” says Siriwardena. “Examples include Just Eat in the UK and Grubhub in the US, which enable restaurants to take orders and payments online.

“The trade-off for this simplified approach is that the business has less direct visibility into customer data.”

Vendors using aggregation platforms to deliver an online channel for their company want access to customer behaviours and buying patterns so they can offer personalised experiences.

“However, this presents a problem for the platform provider around how they can share this data while preserving customer privacy and ensuring they do not infringe data protection laws,” he explains. “As a result, privacy and consent management delivered through CIAM solutions will be a priority for platforms that build and maintain profiles of customers.”

Integration of big data analytics

James Harvey, chief technology officer EMEA at Cisco AppDynamics, says that as we approach the New Year, ‘AIOps’ or the integration of big data analytics, machine learning, and other AI-powered technologies into IT operations, will be a significant trend in the next 12 months.

“[the integration of these technologies] can help IT teams deal with the tsunami of data generated these days, which far outweighs what humans can handle,” explains Harvey. “It’s not about replacing jobs through automation, it’s about providing teams with the right information when and where it’s needed to help them make smart, informed decisions in real-time.

He adds: “Taking personal banking as an example, consumers are becoming increasingly dependent on their mobile devices and the digital services they use. What they expect is a seamless experience, regardless of device or if it’s a busy transaction period.”

AIOps will play a significant role in enabling IT teams to process trends within their data, then identify and solve issues before they affect the end-user, deliver exemplary digital experiences and earn the customer’s trust and loyalty.

Automation

The pandemic has accelerated investment in automation across a range of industries, with businesses exploring the benefits of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation.

“In the new year, I predict more businesses will become platform-driven digital business and use of these technologies will continue to rise,” says Srinivasan, chief digital officer, Tata Communications. “This will help them automate routine, repetitive, predictable tasks and unlock tactical benefits.”

These technologies can result in much better efficiency, accuracy of platforms, and improved user experiences.

“Looking forward at what poses to be an increasingly more uncertain future, expect businesses to continue to gravitate towards solutions that make them more resilient and agile,” adds Srinivasan. “Early adopters of cloud, IoT, and automation were the firms that fared best in 2020. But even as we hopefully say goodbye to COVID-19 in the new year, only expect the benefits of digital transformation to grow.


“No-touch” services

It is likely that next year businesses will continue to adapt their operations with COVID-safe “no touch” services, even when the pandemic has subsided.

“Already, organisations have adapted their operations to be COVID-safe by limiting face-to-face interactions, and many of these adaptations are likely to remain long term due to the convenience they provide,” says Siriwardena, at WS02. “Increasingly, we will see companies develop approaches to serving customers with zero physical interaction and promote these “no-touch” services as a competitive differentiator.”

He gives an example: “Consider the example of car repair, the owner arranges the repair online, books an appointment, and provides details of what is needed.

“They leave the car at the garage, and they are updated on the progress with video and text alerts during the day. When the repairs are complete, they settle the bill online and pick up the car, without directly interacting with anyone.”


Real time location

According to Quuppa, the Retail Time Locating System (RTLS) market is expected to reach around $23 billion by 2026.

“This year alone, the technology has proven a game-changer in the fight against Covid-19, through its applications for social distancing, contract tracing and process monitoring,” says Fabio Belloni, chief commercial officer and founder of Quuppa, the RTLS provider. “However, when integrated into the workplace, its benefits also include asset tracking, regulation management, lowering workplace accidents and overall increased optimisation of supply chains.

“It's also revolutionising competitor team sports through its real-time analysis of players’ performance, allowing coaches and players to detect strengths and development areas.”

Quuppa predicts that next year the technology will continue to be used to monitor and prevent the spread of COVID-19. It also believes that in 2021 mobile operators will combine 5G and RTLS for industrial environments, leveraging private 5G networks and other easy to integrate location technologies

IT operations

In the next 12 months, chief information officers (CIOs) that don’t nail down automation and instrumentation risk losing their jobs.

Research by multinational software company Splunk finds that CIOs who aren’t planning for rapid transformation and changing their organisational structure, will be fired in the next three years.

The study also found that the pandemic will inspire a new generation of immersive tools for digital collaboration, with demand for more creative solutions set to increase next year.

The company also said that augmented and virtual reality may work its way into digital collaboration tools, providing more immersive and interactive experiences.

But with the pandemic forcing everyone online, digitisation has generated problems around performance and security, which are likely to continue in the new year.

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